BTC-USD Seasonality Through the Election Cycle
Bitcoin has traded on major exchanges since 2015 in this dataset, giving us 11 years to break down by the U.S. presidential election cycle. It is the shortest and most volatile sample in the curated list — treat the averages below as directional, not precise.
Reading the chart
The "All Years" line shows the average cumulative path across all valid years. The election-cycle profiles break those same years into groups by year type:
- Election — year % 4 == 0
- Post-Election — year % 4 == 1
- Mid-Term — year % 4 == 2
- Pre-Election — year % 4 == 3
- Trump Presidency Years — the defined Trump-administration years (2016–2019, 2024–2025)
- 2026 YTD — the direct cumulative return of the current year, so far
Open the explorer page and toggle each profile to compare.
Seasonal chart
Snapshot
| Price | $78,048.02 |
| Historical data range | 2015 – 2025 (11 years) |
| Current year | 2026 |
Profiles
| Profile | Range | Years |
|---|---|---|
| All Years | 2015 – 2025 | all 11 |
| Pre-Election | 2015 – 2023 | 2015, 2019, 2023 |
| Election | 2016 – 2024 | 2016, 2020, 2024 |
| Post-Election | 2017 – 2025 | 2017, 2021, 2025 |
| Mid-Term | 2018 – 2022 | 2018, 2022 |
| Trump Presidency Years | 2016 – 2025 | 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2024, 2025 |
| 2026 YTD | 2026 | 2026 |
Monthly checkpoints
Cumulative % change from Jan 1, sampled at each month-end (the Dec row is day 365, one day short of true year-end).
| Month | All Years | Pre-Election | Election | Post-Election | Mid-Term | Trump Presidency Years | 2026 YTD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | -0.9% | -2.1% | 3.3% | 8.4% | -20.9% | -6.5% | -11.4% |
| Feb | 12.2% | 7.9% | 21.5% | 21.6% | -13.1% | 6.1% | -24.5% |
| Mar | 14.1% | 18.5% | 17.9% | 31.8% | -26.0% | 2.0% | -23.3% |
| Apr | 25.0% | 27.1% | 27.2% | 50.8% | -21.3% | 19.0% | -11.9% |
| May | 32.7% | 45.4% | 44.8% | 62.2% | -36.3% | 46.6% | -19.6% |
| Jun | 34.4% | 73.5% | 52.7% | 60.1% | -52.4% | 54.9% | -32.4% |
| Jul | 48.5% | 77.8% | 62.4% | 83.3% | -42.5% | 65.7% | -29.3% |
| Aug | 50.3% | 56.7% | 55.8% | 137.7% | -47.7% | 75.0% | — |
| Sep | 50.1% | 55.4% | 59.2% | 139.4% | -50.7% | 73.4% | — |
| Oct | 77.6% | 95.0% | 87.9% | 194.3% | -49.9% | 95.3% | — |
| Nov | 85.7% | 95.8% | 142.0% | 216.5% | -62.3% | 98.1% | — |
| Dec* | 102.5% | 112.6% | 197.9% | 231.4% | -64.6% | 114.5% | — |
Highlights
- 2026 is deep in the red versus the historical pace. The last confirmed 2026 data point (Aug 30) puts BTC-USD down about -12.0% year-to-date, a sharp divergence from the ~50% average cumulative gain "All Years" typically shows by that point.
- Post-Election years are by far the strongest seasonal tailwind, compounding hard through the second half and finishing near +231% cumulative by year-end on average — largely tracking the post-halving rally pattern.
- Mid-Term years are consistently the weakest, spending the entire year underwater and ending around -65% by year-end.
- Election years build steadily through the back half, jumping from roughly +56% in August to nearly +198% by year-end.
Caveats
This is historical statistics, not a forecast. With only 11 years of data, and just 2–3 years per profile, these averages are heavily influenced by individual outlier years (e.g. a single halving cycle or crash) — trade the summary above with that in mind. Full daily data is available on the explorer page.
Historical statistics based on available market data. Not financial advice. Source: Yahoo Finance